EXCLUSIVE: Council bosses push back opposition calls for an urgent meeting to debate the government announcement about installing Commissioners to run the borough’s affairs. By STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon’s Mayor Jason Perry won’t allow any emergency discussion at the Town Hall on the council’s plight until Thursday, July 10 – almost a full month after the government announced that it is “minded” to send in Commissioners to take over the running of his shambolic council.
Opposition councillors were only informed on Friday this week, June 19, that their urgent call for an emergency meeting of full council won’t be held until next month.
This is despite the council having a deadline of this Wednesday, June 25, to submit its response to the announcement made by local government minister Jim McMahon that the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government has called time on the multi-million-pound borrowing habit of the Tory Mayor and his chief executive, Katherine Kerswell.
One of the repeated criticisms made by McMahon and Croydon’s improvement panel has been how Perry’s council’s handling of the financial crisis has never been quick enough. The tardy manner in which the “emergency” council meeting has been called seems to underline just that.
The decision to delay the emergency meeting in the Town Hall Chamber makes it impossible for the opposition parties – Labour, Green and LibDem – to have any input to the council’s response to the Ministry when it is submitted this coming Wednesday (if Perry and Kerswell manage to get it to Marsham Street on time, that is…).
“The public deserve better,” one council insider told Inside Croydon today.
Slow motion: Mayor Jason Perry doesn’t want to debate the council’s response in public
In his written statement to Parliament on June 12, McMahon had described Croydon as “one of the most financially distressed councils in the country”, mentioning its debts of £1.4billion and his concern that Mayor Perry and Kerswell were seriously planning to increase that borrowing to around £2billion by 2029 – proposals which the previously docile improvement and assurance panel installed in Fisher’s Folly described in its latest report to the MHCLG as “impossible”, saying that it would lead to Croydon Council’s complete “collapse”.
McMahon also mentioned the £136million bail-out loan he signed off for Croydon in March.
Totting up all the Emergency Financial Support given to Croydon since March 2021 at £553million, McMahon said: “This is simply not sustainable.”
The timeline of the council’s response since McMahon’s statement is deeply unimpressive, and raises suspicions that Perry, Kerswell and Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, the former estate agent now employed as the council’s senior legal adviser, have deliberately used the council’s unfinished constitution to delay a potentially controversial confrontation in the Town Hall Chamber.
To date, Perry’s response to the announcement has comprised a brief statement on the council’s unread website and a red-faced video posted to his personal social media account.
“The public deserve a better explanation about what Commissioners mean for Croydon than Perry’s intemperate and ill-judged video,” a Croydon Labour source said.
“If ever it was clear someone was out of their depth, then that video was it,” they said.
They pointed out that it was Perry himself, in a recent letter to Secretary of State Angela Rayner, who admitted that he could not balance the council budget next year.
Perry now seems most reluctant to defend his actions in a public debate.
On Friday, June 13, the day after McMahon’s announcement, five Labour councillors submitted the request for an emergency council meeting. Their understanding was that a meeting should be called within seven days. They hoped to have a debate at the Town Hall by June 24, next Tuesday, the day before the government’s deadline for representations to be submitted.
They heard nothing back for almost a week.
Council officials, led by Kerswell, carried on their “business as usual” pretence through much of last week, with a series of briefing meetings about the chief executive’s pet project “Future Croydon”. There was no briefing arranged over the Commissioner announcement for Croydon’s 37 opposition councillors until the evening of Thursday, June 19 – seven full days after the Minister’s announcement.
It was only then that councillors were told that they would not get a chance to debate the council’s perilous position before the response deadline.
Council business next week has seen a meeting of the independently-chaired audit and governance committee, scheduled for Thursday, June 26, cancelled without explanation.
Disappointed: Labour leader Cllr Stuart King
Perry’s cabinet of nodding dog Tory councillors is still due to meet on Wednesday, June 25. In the cabinet agenda as published, there is no mention of the appointment of Commissioners.
Today, Councillor Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, said, “We are disappointed that the special council meeting Labour called will not take place until July 10 – after the deadline by which the council must submit its formal response to government.
“One minute the Mayor wants discussions with government to be cross-party, the next he’s intent on calling them names.
“Whenever the council meeting takes place, it will be clear for all to see that the Mayor has lost control as well as run out of ideas.”
Read more: Panicked Perry admitted to Rayner: I can’t balance the budget
Read more: Kerswell’s ‘Stabilisation Plan’ has failed before it is approved
Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
Read more: Borrowing plan would lead to council’s ‘collapse’ says report
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